The innovation triangle highlights three components that are essential to establishing a successful and sustainable collaborative idea management process: strategy, culture, and leadership.

1. Strategy

Strategy in its broadest definition outlines the direction the company takes to comply with the vision of the organization. Communicating the strategy and the role of individual employees in “the big picture” is very important; it allows the organization to harness the active participation of its employees. As underlined earlier, fast-growing companies face a challenging problem of communicating their strategy to their internal audience. But beyond simply communicating the direction the company is headed, the organization must also identify and communicate the roles each employee will play in executing this strategy. The concept of collaborative idea management helps the company direct strategic challenges aligned to the core strategy of the company or even to a specific business unit, and it helps engage the employees in innovating around the centrally defined problem. The key idea behind the success of this component is the empowerment of employees by providing them a platform to create innovative solutions and collectively evaluate and select the best solutions for the company-defined challenges.

2. Leadership

The other key aspect of implementing a successful innovation program is applying executive support for the process, which in turn will make respective lines of business/departments engage in the company-designed innovation program. A strong and engaged leadership structure helps the employee stay motivated and helps increase the active participation rate for the designed innovation program. Without support from leadership, an otherwise perfectly designed innovation process or program is bound to fail. In addition, it is imperative that the innovation program is pushed and supported by the top manager of the company/department leading this process. It not only gives a face to the innovation program but also increases the perceived importance of such program.

3. Culture

Lastly, the culture of the organization must be aligned with the innovation process. In the challenges identified above, we highlighted that companies are becoming compartmentalized and operate as silos, with each unit concentrating on its respective objectives. This compartmentalization limits the employees’ ability to understand and effectively participate in initiatives that transcend their departments. The concept of collaborative idea management not only helps connect the employees, but helps the organization bring varied skilled individuals to converse about the potential solution to “sticky problems”. Our experiences with large organizations indicate that employees emphasize problem solving and creating innovative solutions. The collaborative idea management process aligns the need of the organization to the want of the employees, thereby enhancing the workforce experience.

 

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